Page 122 of The Book Reader
“I am Lexus.” She says. Her eyes begin to glow, her markings look alive, shifting slightly on her skin. She smirks as she shimmers from sight.
“Shit!” I rush forward, hoping to see her appear somewhere else in the square, my head snapping to different directions. Waiting. Hoping.
Fisting my hands in my hair, I grip it tight as I hiss in frustration. My mate is nowhere to be seen. Again.
“Fuck!” I say as panic ignites in my body, Leah rushes over. “My lord, I’m sorry. I didn’t know she had a daemon.” She sounds worried. I place my hand on her shoulder and squeeze, giving her the reassurance I wish I had right now.
“Neither did I.” My words are forced, as I'm unsure of what else to say.
Daemons need blood; our mates typically are enough to keep our daemons fed, but Lexus doesn’t know any of this. Trelor and I had to feed on human females when our Rose wasn’t with us.
I cast my eyes over the square, trying to feel for her—trying to use my mate’s senses to find her.
I get nothing.
She is in daemon form and not hiding it. As soon as someone notices her, the Topside daemon hunters will be out in full force. What they won’t understand is that Lexus isn’t a low-level daemon; she is something else entirely.
I curse under my breath, then shimmer back into the house. I walk into the living room and switch on the TV, flipping through the channels, I find a news station and watch it, waiting for news of gruesome murders or of any surge of power. Something to tell me where she is.
Leah comes rushing into the house, followed by two of my guards. One of them crouches down by Mekhi as he starts to wake up.
“Fuck! I’m never drinking again,” he groans and tries to stand up slowly. Whatever Rose did to him has worn off, which worries me that something may have happened to her. “Where is Hitch?” he asks, sounding a bit pissed. I turn to face him, not really knowing what to say. He looks me in the eyes, then down at the TV, and then at the guards surrounding me; his eyes narrow.
Brax gives me a slight nod and takes Mekhi’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Hey, baby boy, let me help clean you up.” Mekhi opens his mouth, but closes it as he checks out my guard. Brax is handsome; his long dark hair and killer orange eyes contrast with his pale skin. Mekhi runs his eyes over him before turning back to look at me.
“If you're trying to distract me with this—” he waves his hands up and down in front of Brax, “—fine hunk of a man, it’s working, but when I come back, Hitch better be here.”
“She will.” I lie. When I get my Rose back, she is not leaving my side or my castle again.
Mekhi looks doubtful, knowing something is wrong. Ari told me that he avoids all supernatural things at all costs; he worries his lips before turning and walking out of the room. Brax follows close behind him. Brax loves women, but he also loves men just as much.
“We haven’t had a daemon hunt in a long time. Have we, Max?” The lady on the TV starts to speak.
Quickly, I spin around and turn the sound up. The newscaster shuffles the papers on her desk with a smile. Her cubby co-host grins, “We have not. This isn’t just any daemon, either; this is something else.”
The screen switches to a vast park, and Rose stands in the middle. Her white skin now covered in blood, piles of dust scattered around her. From the looks of it, she killed anothergroup of low-level daemons. She is breathing hard and hissing at the crowd gathered with nets and rope.
My hands fist, Trelor growls low and deadly in my head. “Let me out, tiny daemon, they hurt mate. She is scared.”I shake my head. If I let him out now, he is going to kill everyone on his way to her.“Let me the fuck out, Gaelan!”He ripples under my skin, pushing so much that I hiss in pain.
“You will wait. We need a plan.” I say firmly. He growls at me, testing me. My markings flash. “Keep pushing me, Trelor, and you will never come out again. Do you understand?”
“And she is gone.” The lady on the TV says, and her co-host laughs smugly, trying to impress the redhead.
“She has, but Cindy at Sweetville has her by the river,” the co-host informs.
The screen changes to a riverbank lit by streetlights. Lexus is situated by a bridge that appears to be constructed from old stones and moss. She is dancing around, giggling, throwing what looks like red paint and goo all over the ground. I look closer and see a dead daemon at her feet, its chest and stomach have been sliced open. Lexus bends down and pulls his inside out, squashes them in her hands before throwing them. She is somehow stopping them from turning to dust. Lexus is enjoying this. It must be a spell of some kind.
More daemons and hunters move in on her. If I am not fast, she is going to kill them all. Lexus might be happy to do so, but I know if she kills a non-supernatural Ari, she won’t recover.
“My lord?” Leah comes up behind me, her voice full of concern. “What do we do?”
“Go back to Illis. Trelor will not need anyone for this.”
She nods but looks a little skeptical.
“It’ll be fine,” I reassure her before shimmering to the side of the river.
A loud gut-wrenching scream echoes in the night. Lexus lifts a daemon into the air, holding him in place with her powers before she spins him around so fast that his body knots in on itself. She is killing them with the glee of a child playing with their toys.
